I was going to wait and watch this until I finished up a couple other series, but everyone here seems to really like it so I gave in. Dang, this series iss haping up great so far! The animation and battles are quite beautiful. Very interested to see where this goes.

Pretty useless episode, this 3rd was, as well as DBZ prolly had more fights than this, between a "bulk up" episode and the other. Here we barely saw them fighting the random mobs, and then the "boss"... was sort of skipped. Derp. It didn't help that this episode was taken from the second novel, which is made of side stories that happen inbetween the events of the first novel.Let's see how it'll play out the next episodes. I just hope it'll go for an anime exclusive ending of sort, btw. Or at least stop at the "good" point. So far it's pretty low in my enjoyment list of the season, though I'm not following too many shows to begin with. It's not bad, just that so far it's been mostly boring and... useless. The most enjoyable thing was the boss battle in ep 2 which wasn't that great to begin with.

wtf happened with this ep, it was so random. Ep 2 they just cleared floor 1 after 6 months. Then at the beginning of ep 3 they're reading in the paper of groups clearing floor 28. Oh, and then halfway through the ep he's suddenly at floor 49. How many months/years have passed? or did all the floors suddenly get really easy to pass? This is like watching lord of the rings where all you see of the first movie is a 30 second flashback. damn this whole ep pissed me off, see spoiler for rants heh

Spoiler :

The conversations all just pissed me off. First the black cat guild guy saying that they're going to win because of their willpower and because they're friends (so much for that lol). Then the girl crying and asking why they had to die (htf is he supposed to know). And then they all die. Seriously, how did that contribute to the plot in any way where you introduce a bunch of characters and kill them off 5 minutes later. And what was he doing in an area with level 20's when he was level 48, he should have been pushing the top floors with the rest of the vanguard groups.

So then Kirito dedicates however many months of leveling with the sole goal of rezzing all his short term friends (he knew them all of...what, 1 or 2 days?) and in the process abandons klein (a guy who's actually trying to help him) to get ganked so he can find an item that probably wont work on the guys who are already dead. then he goes all emo and then gets better after getting a love letter.

Basically, absolutely nothing plotworthy happened other than a HUGE time-jump forward. And aside from Kirito all the other people who looked like they were going to be main characters have had less screen time than the people who are getting killed off. I really hope they do a 180 and get back on track cause this one ep just made this series drop from near the top of my list of series this season to somewhere below center mass.

edit: ok, just noticed the date that they had in the ep, 1 year has passed since ep 2, and they cleared 49+ floors during that time. What happened to balanced leveling progression? oh, and the PvP question has been answered, guess it's open world pvp, no restrictions

Yeah looks like pvp has no restrictions.That time skip pissed me off as well. I didn't get to see Asuna and I wonder if they even met in that 11 months.

Jasta85 wrote:Ep 2 they just cleared floor 1 after 6 months

Actually I think it was cleared after 1 month.With this big of a time skip I hope for one thing and one thing only... When they get to level 100 it could be like "Congrats, you cleared the easy round. You have 200 floors left"I was like WUUUUT when he agreed to join the guild. I actually wonder how he maneges to level so fast even after he joined withnout them noticing.. He might have been exping at night since he was secretly going out at night.. you know the suicide scene with Sachi.This episode wasn't all that strong but I guess it at least played the role of getting Kirito more depressed witch isn't really a bad thing since that's some character development.

I'll say it again, since you might have missed it in my post. This episode came from the second novel, which is made of side story chapters that chronologically take place during the first novel, in which there is an actual story progression.

mirkosp wrote:I'll say it again, since you might have missed it in my post. This episode came from the second novel, which is made of side story chapters that chronologically take place during the first novel, in which there is an actual story progression.

I haven't missed it actually. I was just trying to say that even though it wasn't that strong it at least kind of benefited the plot

Spoiler :

with his friends dying

I still like this serie a lot.. I don't usually get discouraged from watching a show by a single episode if it had some good ones before.

mirkosp wrote:I'll say it again, since you might have missed it in my post. This episode came from the second novel, which is made of side story chapters that chronologically take place during the first novel, in which there is an actual story progression.

I saw your post too so I understand that the ep is canon, it's just that it didn't make any sense to me to have it as the third ep. ep 1 introduces the world, ep 2 shows them clearing the boss of floor 1, ep 3 does 2 big time jumps and has a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't seem to advance the plot much. it was just weird that they selected that to be in the third ep.

It was mostly to say that with the second volume, things didn't happen chronologically, although they're just side stories, and this might be the case with the anime. LN spoiler ahead:

Spoiler :

Keep in mind that the first volume ends with them out of SAO already. The first novel spans for the time of two years, and it ends with Kirito out to search for Asuna once awake. Novel 2 then ties into the events of the first novel and adds stuff.

But since we're talking about events that weren't even talked about in the first novel, it's obvious that they weren't necessary to show to begin with, so imho it's stuff they could have skipped entirely.In any case, judging from the title of the fourth episode, we're in for another side story. So what I'm getting at is, perhaps they want to get the side stories all done now, and then go back to the first volume/main course of events and just focus on Asuna with the side story characters out of the way. I still think that ignoring the side stories entirely would have been better, but oh well.

ep3 is my fave so far. I don't mind the time gap and the lack of progression, I like the scripting and the sense that the emotions the characters are feeling are pretty realistic for the situation they are in, I think that was the purpose of the episode, it's much better than making the show another overblown shounen

mirkosp wrote:It was mostly to say that with the second volume, things didn't happen chronologically, although they're just side stories, and this might be the case with the anime. LN spoiler ahead:

Spoiler :

Keep in mind that the first volume ends with them out of SAO already. The first novel spans for the time of two years, and it ends with Kirito out to search for Asuna once awake. Novel 2 then ties into the events of the first novel and adds stuff.

But since we're talking about events that weren't even talked about in the first novel, it's obvious that they weren't necessary to show to begin with, so imho it's stuff they could have skipped entirely.In any case, judging from the title of the fourth episode, we're in for another side story. So what I'm getting at is, perhaps they want to get the side stories all done now, and then go back to the first volume/main course of events and just focus on Asuna with the side story characters out of the way. I still think that ignoring the side stories entirely would have been better, but oh well.

Spoiler :

I don't suppose they ever say what the government was doing in the mean time. You've got 10000 people plugged into a game for 2 years who can't disconnect and are slowly dying off and the government just shrugs its shoulders and goes "oh, it's too advanced for us, we don't know what to do". The helmets kill them by sending a specific overload or something into their brains, wouldnt some instantaneous EMP used on the helmet knockout the electronics before they could send the kill message? but then i'm probably reading into it too much

Well, they were put on external support, as I'm pretty sure that he wakes up in a hospital or so at the end of volume one, so that's probably what the government did in the mean time. Other solutions might have been discarded as too risky, I guess. In order to destroy the Nerve Gear they need microwaves (or other electromagnetic radiations, which would at least damage the brain at that distance and at the required "strength."

ep 4 was pretty good, I like how the had showed how big the differences in levels are, and how he was in a lower level area for a reason, not just wandering around randomly.

But I'm still a bit angry that there's still no continuity between episodes, they're pretty much all separate episodes at this point, it doesn't feel like the fight for survival like the first ep made it out to be. Also, there's new characters every ep and then they don't show up again. They'll probably all meet again in some of the final eps but I wish there was a bit more character development till then.